How to Love Your Body Just The Way It Is

Best Health Staff

We can all use these tips for a healthier relationship with our body.

1. Love your quirks to honour your family

“Most of us can see a beloved relative’s shape when we look at our bodies,” says Pat Ballard, a ‘Health at Every Size’ movement activist and author of 10 Steps to Loving Your Body (No Matter What Size You Are).

Stop lamenting the day you inherited a family member’s chubby cheeks or flat silhouette.

Instead, cherish the parts that remind you of Mom or Grandma, and remember her strengths. “Be thankful your body is a constant reminder of someone you love,” says Ballard.

2. Love the skin you’re in, and others will, too

“When you’re hard on yourself, the people around you usually jump on the bandwagon,” says Quebec-based nutritionist and body coach Robyn Jaquays. “They’re hard on you, too.”

The more you honour and appreciate your body, the more likely it is you’ll attract positive, uplifting people into your life. “Stop telling yourself you’re fat, ugly or stupid,” she says.

Morgan explains that if you’ve built an adversarial relationship with your body through negative thoughts and comments, then your body is less likely to cooperate with your attempts to lose weight or get healthy. It rebels.

He says, “Learning to love yourself will repair your relationship with your body and make it more willing to cooperate with your requests.”

6. Love yourself for the power within

“I always loathed my body,’ says stay-at-home mother of three Dawn Johnston, a former marketing/PR director. “Even when I was thin, I was convinced that I was a slob. I wouldn’t even wear short sleeves.”

Her perspective changed when she was pregnant with, birthed and nursed her first child.

“I couldn’t believe that my body” which I spent so much time hating could actually grow a human being! That’s when I stopped hating my body and started appreciating it for the miracle that it truly is.